The Boston Celtics dispatched the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games Monday night, becoming the first team to reach the conference finals as the rest of the NBA’s second round headed toward a compressed Tuesday-and-Wednesday slate that will set the league’s final four. Across the country, Major League Baseball’s six-week-old season pushed deeper into May with the Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds clinging to division leads and the New York Yankees finally clawing back toward .500 after a punishing April.

Boston’s 109-94 win at TD Garden was the kind of disciplined closeout that has defined the top-seeded Celtics under second-year head coach Joe Mazzulla, who has now coached his team past Cleveland in three of the last four postseasons. Jayson Tatum, who entered the night needing one more triple-double for the second of his career in this postseason, finished with 28 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists. Jrue Holiday added 21 points and forced four steals, including a steal-and-finish with 4:11 left that pushed Boston’s lead to 14 and effectively ended Cleveland’s night.

“Closeout games are about not letting the team across from you breathe, ever,” Mazzulla said in the locker room. “We knew Cleveland was going to throw everything at us tonight because they had to. Our job was to make sure the math never got close enough for them to feel it.”

Donovan Mitchell, who had played through what the Cavaliers described as a left calf strain since Game 4, finished with 24 points but went 9-of-23 from the floor and was visibly limited on defensive switches in the second half. He shook hands with several Celtics players at midcourt after the buzzer and walked off without speaking to reporters. Coach Kenny Atkinson, in his postgame availability, said Mitchell had asked to remain in the game even as the deficit widened.

“He told me at the under-six in the fourth that he was good,” Atkinson said. “I trusted him. I would trust him again. We lost the series because Boston is better right now, not because of one player’s leg.”

The Celtics will not know their conference-final opponent until at least Wednesday night. Milwaukee, which entered Monday tied 2-2 with Philadelphia, was set to play Game 5 at Fiserv Forum on Tuesday with Giannis Antetokounmpo cleared to play after sitting out Game 3 with a lower-back contusion. Whichever team prevails will face Boston in a series that league officials said would not begin before Sunday, May 17, to allow for travel and broadcast scheduling.

Out West, the Oklahoma City Thunder host the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday night at Paycom Center with the second-round series tied 2-2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player, has averaged 35.5 points across the first four games and was named Western Conference Player of the Week on Monday for the second consecutive week. Anthony Edwards, who committed seven turnovers in Minnesota’s Game 4 loss, returned to Target Center practice Monday afternoon with what coach Chris Finch called “a clean session” after acknowledging that Edwards has been managing a sprained right thumb since the opening round.

“He’s not going to use the thumb as a story, and neither am I,” Finch told reporters. “Game 5 is Game 5. We expected to be playing this one in Oklahoma. We have a plan, and the plan does not involve apologizing for ourselves.”

The Denver-New York series, also tied 2-2, resumes Wednesday at Ball Arena. Nikola Jokic has averaged 30 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists across the four games, and is one triple-double from tying Magic Johnson’s career postseason total. Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, who missed the team’s Game 1 practice with a sore right shoulder, was a full participant in Monday’s session at MSG Training Center.

ESPN, in an internal note circulated to broadcast partners Monday and confirmed by a network spokesperson, said second-round audiences across the four series were now pacing 23 percent above the same window in 2025, the strongest second-round figure since 2018. League executives have privately attributed the surge to two factors: the return of casual sports viewership since the April 15 Iran ceasefire, and what one senior official described as “the best possible spread of small-market and large-market matchups in years.”

In Major League Baseball, the Detroit Tigers extended their American League Central lead to four games over the Cleveland Guardians with a 5-1 win at Comerica Park on Monday night. Left-hander Tarik Skubal struck out 11 over seven innings and lowered his ERA to 1.54 through eight starts. Detroit closed Monday at 24-11.

“He’s not pitching like a Cy Young winner. He’s pitching like the next thing after that, whatever the next thing is,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said.

The Cincinnati Reds, who held a five-game lead in the National League Central entering the week, lost a tight 4-3 decision to the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday night at PNC Park but remained four-and-a-half games clear. Shortstop Elly De La Cruz, who has been the league’s most productive hitter in early May, went 2-for-4 with his 14th home run of the season.

The New York Yankees, who fired bench coach Brad Ausmus on May 2, won their fifth game in six attempts with a 7-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium. Right-hander Gerrit Cole, in his third start back from a forearm strain that cost him the season’s opening month, pitched six innings of two-run ball. Manager Aaron Boone, asked whether the roster as constituted could compete in the AL East, said only, “We’re getting better. Ask me again in two weeks.”

Game 5 of Thunder-Timberwolves tips Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on TNT. Game 5 of Bucks-76ers begins at 7 p.m. Eastern on the same network. League officials said the full conference-finals schedule would be released within 12 hours of the bracket being set.